Weekly output: Most Innovative Companies (x2), Simbe Robotics, Starlink at the White House, T-Mobile’s 5G speed record, Trump tries to fire FTC Dems, Verizon satellite messaging, Mark Vena podcast, Tools for Humanity
Months of on-and-off work for one of Fast Company’s most involved projects, the annual Most Innovative Companies list, finally yielded published copy this week. You can imagine my relief at that. This coming week should not feature nearly as many bylines for me, in part because I will be out of the office Thursday afternoon for one of the most important rites of spring: the Washington Nationals’ home opener.
3/18/2025: The most innovative companies in manufacturing for 2025, Fast Company
Some of the companies honored in this part of the MIC list were obvious calls, but more involved a lot of back-and-forth deliberation between me and my editors.
3/18/2025: The most innovative companies in robotics and engineering for 2025, Fast Company
I don’t cover the robotics industry all the time, but I spend enough time covering it to feel a little more at home judging what ranks as innovative in that sector.
3/18/2025: These retail robots travel through store aisles, scanning shelves for inventory and insights, Fast Company
Simbe Robotics earned a nod in last year’s MIC list, and this time around we elected to run a separate story about this startup’s work optimizing retail.
3/18/2025: Report: Starlink Tries to Fix White House’s Wi-Fi Woes, PCMag
The New York Times report about a deployment of Starlink broadband at the White House–which should neither be remotely necessary nor provide fiber-competitive speeds–didn’t mention how often Elon Musk has described Starlink as a rural-first solution. But I have those notes and made sure to surface quotes from them in this piece.
3/19/2025: T-Mobile Claims New 5G Download Speed Record, PCMag
My conversation with T-Mobile’s tech president Ulf Ewaldsson at MWC two weeks earlier helped me put this speed test in context.
3/19/2025: Trump Attempts to Fire the FTC’s Democratic Commissioners, PCMag
After I’d filed this report about Trump ignoring established law and a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling to try to fire Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission, my editor improved it by suggesting I remind readers of the chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that suggests curbing the FTC’s statutory independence.
3/20/2025: Verizon Opens Non-Emergency Satellite Messaging to Galaxy S25, Pixel 9 Users, PCMag
Because I was swamped Wednesday covering the FTC news, I didn’t get to this news until Thursday–by which time Charter and Comcast had announced that their wireless services, based on resold Verizon capacity, were also getting Skylo satellite roaming for customers with Galaxy S25 and Pixel 9 series phones.
3/20/2025: Ep 108 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Skype, NVIDIA GTC, MWC, BYD “fast charging”, Mark Vena
I spent most of my time in this episode of the podcast talking about what I saw at MWC, but the closing discussion of EV charging let me drop in a reference to The Cannonball Run that amused my fellow cinephiles.
3/21/2025: Bot or Not? To Prove You’re Human, Look Into This 8-Inch Orb, PCMag
Almost a month after I talked to Tools for Humanity’s chief architect Adrian Ludwig at Web Summit Qatar–during which that startup signed up a notable new partner and I developed a deeper understanding of what it’s trying to do with this identity scheme–the piece finally made it online.
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Il nuovo Orb di Worldcoin: un design più accogliente 